Looking back at the weekly messages of Father Paul Counce, first published in The Carpenter, our weekly Parish Bulletin
Published: October 13, 2019
This weekend I’ll be away from the Parish, attending the annual convention of the Canon Law Society of America, which is in New Jersey this year. Father Tim Grimes will “sub” for me. As a “son” of St. Joseph Cathedral Parish ordained just this past May, we know him and he knows us, so I’m sure he’ll be a comfortable celebrant with you. Make him feel welcome! Make sure he eats a doughnut or two after the 8:30 Mass on Sunday morning!
Also this weekend members of the St. Joseph Cemetery Fund Board will speak briefly after communion at each Mass. Their topic will be the “ministry” of cemetery preservation and maintenance. A cemetery is a sacred space, just like a church building, wherein the bodies of the faithful rest in anticipation of their final resurrection from the dead. Our Parish owns two historic cemeteries in Baton Rouge: St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery on Main Street behind the old Goudchaux’ building, and Highland Cemetery on Oxford Street just past the south gates of LSU. Each of us should care about and help reverence these holy places. Particularly if you have family buried there, you will with to visit their gravesites soon, and “spruce up” their resting places there.
The Cemetery Fund Board also is hopeful that you’ll especially support St. Joseph Cemetery with a financial contribution. So much could be done to maintain and even upgrade the cemetery if only we had more funds! If you have cash or your checkbook with you, reach for one of the yellow envelopes in the pews and mark it “Cemetery Fund,” placing it into the collection basket this week or next. If not, remember your help is welcome at any time, in any collection or here at the Parish Office. Members of the Board will also be at the Masses this weekend to help.
It’s appropriate to dwell on this since the upcoming month of November is traditionally a time to show our respect for the faithful departed. Not everyone who dies is worthy of heaven at that moment, but our prayers and sacrifices on their behalf can assist in the purification of those whose sins betrayed them. If their final choice was repentance, then indeed eternal happiness still remains an eventual possibility for them.
November in fact begins with a great and favorite feast of the Church. All Saints’ Day on November 1 is a holy day of obligation when we honor and beg intercession of all of those who have joined the Lord in heavenly glory. Many saints are known and in more recent centuries have been “canonized,” that is, officially recognized by the Church as living now in glory. Yet surely there are countless others, “known but to God,” whose example on earth and prayers from heaven assist us who remain in living holy Christian lives. All Saints’ Day is their day, as we rejoice in their victory. This year it will fall on a Friday, so we’ll celebrate it with Masses at 7:30 am and 12 noon that day. Later that afternoon, at 4 pm at St. Joseph Cemetery itself, I’ll lead a small ceremony of prayer and blessing for that sacred place, to which everyone’s invited.
Before we remember the dead on All Saints’ Day, however, we’ll celebrate with the living of our Parish, on GRAND Day, Sunday, October 20! Do your best to come, and bring your grandchildren (and your grandparents and your children and all of their friends!) to that day’s 10:30 am Mass and the party we’ll have in the Hall and all over Cathedral Square right afterwards! It’s sort of like our “Parish Picnic,” a wonderful time for all of us! I promise it will be GRAND!
Yours in the Lord,
Very Rev Paul D. Counce
